


Be Seeing You

by nightstarry



Category: Twilight Series - Stephenie Meyer
Genre: F/F, Hurt No Comfort, Lesbians, Pining, Romance, bella and rose were soulmates in the 30s, bella is reincarnated, edward is annoying, memory loss (kinda)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-17
Updated: 2021-02-17
Packaged: 2021-03-12 05:13:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29504637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightstarry/pseuds/nightstarry
Summary: Rosalie had known Bella once, in her days of flesh and blood, when bruises sprouted like rose blossoms across delicate skin, skirts were mussed with the spill of chunky persimmon guts from clenched fists, when laughter was passed in stolen kisses hidden in tall, dewy blades of grass. Rosalie had loved Bella once. Naturally, Bella is born again, but amidst the blue tinted ebb and flow of students at Forks High School, she cannot remember the blonde haired girl of her past life, the girl who’s heart is now still and cold within her body.
Relationships: Rosalie Hale/Bella Swan
Comments: 13
Kudos: 135





	Be Seeing You

Rosalie tried not to remember it too often. Attempted to staunch the stain of recollection seeping slowly across the front lobe of her brain like crimson rivulets of blood rolling from the protruding slope of her pink bottom lip and down the dimpled curve of her chin. After a couple decades of diligent practice, Rosalie was capable of murdering a memory in its very tracks when it happened to threaten arising and overtaking her mind. 

This was dialed up to a difficulty of one hundred percent with the arrival of Bella Swan to Forks High School.  
Rosalie hadn’t even noticed at first, and with her overall air of superiority over the rest of the students at Forks she most likely wouldn’t have for a significant amount of time if it hadn’t been for the suddenness of Edward stiffening in his feet and fidgeting abnormally.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Rosalie hissed, clamping the sole of her heel down on Edward’s foot with a force that would likely have severed the toes of any of the children surrounding them, yet only caused Edward to flinch slightly and tuck the foot behind his other ankle. “You look like you’re having a seizure.” Fucking spaz. 

The widening and glossing over of Alice’s doe eyes - so large and thickly framed by spindly lashes that she resembled a haunted doll in any generic horror film - indicated that she was now in on the reasoning behind Edward’s irregular spazzing. 

“What is it, Alice?” Emmett nudged his sister encouragingly. He was exceedingly better at buttering up their gifted siblings in order to unwind secrets from their grasp. 

“It’s the new girl,” Alice confessed, clasping her delicate fingers before her atop the sticky surface of the lunch table. She glanced over at Rosalie in a way that made her stomach drop. Then, in a motion that had the rest of the Cullens’ gazes following her own, she stared directly at the table across the cafeteria from them. 

It was the same as all the others, stuffed with awkwardly dressed teens chortling and choking down revolting looking globs of pasta and slices of bread, or whatever else they had fancied consuming that day. Rosalie was about to turn back to Alice and Edward to demand what all the fuss was about before her eyes locked onto the side profile of the last figure at the table, and all at once her mind was flooded with a sharp rush of memories that she had no preparation to hold back or stamp out. 

Persimmon guts oozing into her lap. The prick of thorns against her fingertips. Winding chestnut locks haloed in freshly plucked wildflowers. Hoarse laughter plaited with sanguine strings of copper cartwheeling across the room. Knobbly knees drooping down to box her hips between them. Lips that - 

An freezing wave of calm and focus crashed over her and Rosalie realized she had ripped off a strip of the fabric of the sleeve of her cardigan. “Thank you,” she mumbled to Jasper, who had gripped the reigns of her thrashing emotions and knocked her back into reality. 

Alice was maintaining intense eye contact with Edward, whose lips were moving in such a way that it was almost inscrutable. “I don’t know. Transfer, maybe.”

They were talking about her. Discussing her future within their own heads. “Yeah, yeah, lets just send Rose away, because she’s utterly incapable of managing her own feelings. In fact, why don’t we just fake her death? Keep it nice and clean.” 

Edward’s eyes flicked in his signature unfulfilled eye roll - as if the person it was directed at was not worthy of a complete one. “Rose - ” 

“Don’t ‘Rose’ me. Do you think I’m some insane nostalgia maniac? I can handle it.” 

“Rose, this isn’t about nostalgia. You and Isabella were madly in love.” Alice reached across the table to take Rosalie’s hand in hers, but Rosalie jerked her fist away before the gesture of comfort had been achieved.

“Don’t,” her voice shook, and she pressed her lips into a tight line to steady her vocal chords before she continued, “say her name. And we were not madly in love, for fuck’s sake. Besides, it could never matter anymore. I love Emmett, now.” 

To underscore emphasize her point, Rosalie looped her arm through the curve of Emmett’s and leaned into the side of his form. Emmett was broad and strong, cold and hard. Completely opposite to the tiny and fragile dainitiness and encapsulating warmth of - 

Emmett looked unsure. They had been nearly one and the same soul for decades, and yet Rosalie had never truly bore her soul to him to its absolute point. His knowledge of Isabella and her entwinement with Rosalie in her human years was extremely limited, and even then she had not expressed the depths of their intimacy and bond. He might not even have been able to fathom it. Rosalie could barely understand it herself, and she spent so much of her existence as an immortal working desperately to forget it that she almost had.

Rosalie shot him a burning look. “Truly, Em, its in the past. She’s a totally different person now, remember? A fresh start on Earth. I almost didn’t recognize her,” she forced a laugh to spill from her mouth that was closer to stale molasses than its usual golden honey. “I’m completely fine.” Rosalie switched the look to Alice and Edward, its burn a pointed blue flame. 

Alice and Edward exchanged another infuriating wordless exchange. Edward huffed. “We’ll see how it goes, and have a more in depth discussion with Carlisle later.” 

Rosalie flipped him off for lack of a proper cutting comeback. 

When the bell had finally rung it sliced through the thick air of uncomfortable silence between them, and as they drew themselves up to exit the cafeteria Rosalie’s eyes betrayed her with their inability to resist stealing one last look at the new girl. Bella Swan. 

She was dressed loosely in green, her hair hung in long, loose curls that spilled over her pointy shoulders as she fumbled to balance her lunch tray in her hands while she stood up clumsily, feet tangled in the legs of the chair. If Rosalie hadn’t had perfect vision and the foreign figure was but a chaste blur across the room there was a panging feeling in her chest that she still would have mistaken it for the otherworldly girl from her past. As the Cullens swept past the table and Bella Swan’s disgustingly pretty reek of wet cobblestones and molding persimmon to the door, Rosalie felt the blood of the innocent doe she had slaughtered the night before rise in her throat, and it was all she could do not to choke. 

— 

Alas, no shit, Edward had to go and fall despairingly in love with the fucking girl. 

It was the ear splitting shatter and crash of the glass bowl in her hands that snapped Rosalie out of her reverie. There Bella Swan was, standing disjointedly with her weight settled on her left hip and her hands tucked behind her in the back pockets of her frayed jeans, a thin headband protecting her angular face from the looming curtain of the thick whirlwind of hair she usually let swallow her expressions, showcasing those milky way filled eyes and those rosy little smiles she seemed to save specifically for when Edward complimented her or made a dry remark that were so obviously hundred-year-old man jokes it hurt. 

Rosalie’s anger was so intense and overpowering it was easy to direct it anywhere. So what if Bella had already eaten? It wasn’t as if the Cullens would suffer terribly from the subsequent waste of food. They were filthy rich. When Rosalie’s body still thrummed with the circulation of fiery blood through her veins, she had been comfortable, but not equipped with the endless money she had now. Isabella - or Bella, rather - had been even less so, always draped in flimsy dresses of cheap flowery patterns and jaunty hats she had crafted herself. They had never paraded out to exquisite restaurants together and dined on tooth rotting tea and cakes, but strewn their limbs out on flattened grasses and feather light blossoms, propped up on bruised elbows to talk for hours and - 

Rosalie blinked hard and fast, her eyes nearly bleeding with fleeting images of taking Bella’s soft jaw in her hands and pressing their bodies together so hard - 

“Hi, Bella.” Alice and Jasper’s arrival averted everyone’s general attention elsewhere. Thank fuck, for if Rosalie had been forced to stare into those milky chocolate eyes for a second she would have melted under their warmth and confusion. Her Bella had no idea who she was. Her Bella. Edward’s, now, she supposed with an ugly vehemence. She wanted to cry out at the weight of the wound of remembering Bella for it to only turn out like this. It wasn’t fair. She pictured springing from her position and tearing Edward’s very head off, and with it still dangling limply from her hands turning with a passion to press her lips to Bella’s her tongue -

“Rose?” Emmett whispered, ducking subtly as he did, and Rosalie realized his was the only attention still focused on her. She hoped her eyes had not betrayed her thoughts. 

Cracking a smile, she whispered teasingly, “Em?” 

“You look a little green.” 

Rosalie nudged him playfully, Fuck, it hurt her to lie to him like this when she was in such immense pain already. “Yeah, right. We’re vampires.” 

“Are you sure you’re okay?” He beheld her in so open and sweet a way, a stabbing sensation rammed into Rosalie’s chest repeatedly knowing he didn’t deserve this, not in the least. 

“Of course.” With gusto, Rosalie brought the line of her body against his and captured his lips so forcefully he stumbled backwards for a split second before responding in kind. Emmett could be persuaded effortlessly simply with a little action. Rosalie closed her eyes and pushed away thoughts swimming to the surface of knotting her fist in curls scattered with spring buds, thigh nudging silky knees apart, the taste of spicy blood and marmalade - 

A throat was cleared. It was Carlisle, a crooked grin on his face that was noticeably slathered over concern and hesitance. Rosalie could read her creator and makeshift father like the yellowed pages of a book with its fading bolded script half memorized. He thought Rosalie was lashing out and showing off, pushing away memories of Bella and replacing them with an abundance of Emmett, so near and accessible. He was right, and it wasn’t fair. Rosalie felt disgusted, but even more she longed to be the one leading Bella up the wooden stairs with her hand grazing the striped shirt covering the small of her back, exchanging joking sarcasm and intoxicating giggles. 

Rosalie ignored him.“Wanna play chess, Jas?” 

—

“Why do you hate me so much?” 

“I don’t hate you,” Rosalie scoffed. To think that she could harbor even a shred of hatred toward this sweet creature was laughable. “I - you remind me of someone…. I used to know. When I was human. Someone very - very dear to me.” 

Bella nodded solemnly, eyes fixated intently on Rosalie. So ready and willing. “Who?” 

“A girl.” Rosalie was careful as she spoke, calculating her next move as quickly as her feet could glide across the mossy forest floor. She knew the entirety of her family were listening in next door, and she would pay for a slip up. “Her name was Isabella too.” At least she thought she was being careful. What was she doing? Edward would kill her. She would do it herself if she continued on this track. 

Surprisingly, Bella appeared enraptured. Her face was closer to Rosalie’s than it had been since 1933, and even the smatter of freckles across the bridge of her nose was the exact same as it was then. Rosalie could practically taste her breath, hot and rich with a honeyed flavor akin to the baby mince pies she had used to make especially to come and bring them to Rosalie, who had carried a special fondness for the pastry. Yet, Rosalie made no move to retract her own face from its condensed distance to Bella’s. “What was she like?” 

“Much like…. much like you.” For the first time since her death, Rosalie allowed a gentle wash of memories to drench her in their bittersweetness. The brushing of knuckles caged in satin kid-gloves, the rush of every cell in her body to rearrange themselves to pin Bella as the center of their universe and to orbit fully around her. Every passing glance charged with longing and the subsequent pull toward Bella like gravity keeping the heels of her finicky little leather boots on the ground. The first time they kissed and how Rosalie had felt truly drunk on Bella’s citrusy scent and velvety skin, her gentle touches ghosting along Rosalie’s cheekbone and tongue flicking tentatively across Rosalie’s top lip. The hours they spent every day browsing hat shops and crawling through the short hyacinths and lilies filling Rosalie until she was practically brimming with contentment. “Selfless, sweet, you know. She,” a smile played across the hard clench of her mouth, “she was so fucking clumsy sometimes.”

“She sounds amazing. Like you were very close.” 

Rosalie returned Bella’s sound eye contact with honesty. “She was perfect. Until Emmett, I never knew you could need someone as much as I needed her.” 

A hum and sudden throbbing heat alerted Rosalie to a blush spreading up the slant of Bella’s ghostlike cheekbones. Then came a question in the form of a statement. Bella had tangled them up in the unreadable threads of her saccharine words that Rosalie couldn’t tell if it was one or the other. “You loved her like Emmett.” 

Slowly, “Yes.” Bella. Please, more than anything. “I loved her.” 

“I remember.”

**Author's Note:**

> so sorry about my shitty attempt at an ambiguous ending/cliffhanger cause i really can’t think of any way to continue this lmao i promise to write more rosella that actually has closure


End file.
